


Elusive It Haunts

by QuillerQueen



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, missing year
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-26 11:17:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19004689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuillerQueen/pseuds/QuillerQueen
Summary: Prompt 114: “I just want to see you smile”. Missing Year. Robin makes an accidental confession in the heat of a confrontation with a raging Regina.





	Elusive It Haunts

It just slips out.

Robin certainly doesn't intend to say it. He might think it, certainly, but that's a different matter entirely. He'd never dream of admitting it to her, for her reaction would be—well, the very same it currently is.

At least she's no longer hurling fireballs in Robin's general direction. (That said, it doesn't escape his notice how poor her aim seems to be—he's known her to fell enemies with admirable dexterity often enough to know she's been missing him on purpose.) Now she seems rooted to the spot, frozen with her arm outstretched and that vein in her forehead pulsing angrily. She stares at him in such utter shock he might as well have grown an extra head.

"What did you just say?" she demands softly, though he doesn't miss the rattled, borderline dangerous undertone.

She's been cross with him since the morning council meeting, which dispatched them on yet another mission together. She detests their frequent forced interactions, she huffed. She'd much rather handle affairs on her own, or in anyone else's company for that matter.

Robin, used to their smarting banter, to Regina's tempestuous tempers and barbed retorts, responded with his customary smirk, matching her dig for dig. Whatever set her off, he must have missed it, for next thing he knew they'd crossed the thin line from verbal sparring into hostility.

And then came the fireballs, raining upon him—or rather, around him—amid rage and bitter accusations.

He's a rascal and a fraud, always underfoot, purposefully provoking, perpetually professing his good intentions with actions and sometimes even words, and whatever scheme, whatever plot he's surely brewing against her would not succeed because she’s not so easily fooled—so why can’t he just tell her straight what the fuck it is he's really after?

That's when the words escaped him, catapulted from his heart, where he's been guarding them jealously—but not jealously enough.

Now she’s daring him to speak them again, a thinly veiled threat should he be bold enough to do so. He can contain them again, bite them back and lock them safely inside his chest. He could, perhaps even should.

In the protracted silence, her fist closes and her mouth draws into a sarcastic smile, knowing, mocking—but her eyes, her eyes are no longer aflame but misty with a melancholy that resides there often. As if she never expected someone to say such words and mean them, or indeed own them.

"I just want to see you smile," he tells her again, firmly, holding her gaze.

The Queen never does. Not unless those murderous ones with a malicious glint in her eyes count, the ones usually inspired by Zelena, channeling into rage and hatred what’s left of the Queen’s will to live when her son’s been forever taken from her. The Queen doesn’t smile, not truly; Regina only ever does for Roland.

And so can Robin really be blamed for trying to conjure up one of those elusive smiles of hers on occasion? With his son’s antics, with his own tomfoolery, with attentive gestures and—rarely, for she barely allows it—shows of support. 

“I’ve no reason to smile, thief.”

Well then, he’s failed miserably. 

“So if I’m hearing your right, Your Majesty,” he offers half-heartedly, “you’re saying I shouldn’t quit my present trade to fulfil my lifelong dream of becoming a court jester.”

“Since when is thieving a trade?” she quips, and perhaps not all is lost.

“Since the Queen herself appointed herself my apprentice to learn it.”

“Well, I’d never had a need for a court jester, so perhaps your choice isn’t so unfortunate after all.”

All is not lost—there’s that challenging smirk, that twinkle in her eye that comes out to play when she’s comfortable with their banter instead of angry or hurting.

“I’ve never been more grateful for a personal failure before,” he deadpans.

And there it is—half-smile, half-chuckle, almost despite herself, before she’s disappearing in a plume of purple smoke, leaving Robin standing in the courtyard with a grin Little John would undoubtedly label as lovestruck.


End file.
